Occupational prestige (also known as job prestige) is a way for sociologists to describe the relative social class positions people have. It refers to the consensual nature of rating a job based on the belief of its worthiness. The term prestige itself refers to the admiration and respect that a particular occupation holds in a society. Occupational prestige is prestige independent of the particular individual who occupies a job. Sociologists have identified prestige rankings for more than 700 occupations based on results from a series of national surveys. They created a scale with 0 being the lowest possible score to 100 being the highest, and then ranked the occupations based on the results of the survey. The top ten occupations with the highest prestige, in order, are pharmacist (1), Physician (2), lawyer(3), computer scientist(4), college professor(5), physicist (6), chemical engineer (7), architect (8), biologist (9), and physical scientist (10).

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As he made his way across a crowded room, eyes trained on me, the stranger approached with purpose. He ignored my husband standing next to me and said, “I want to meet the professor!” I completed my doctorate in sociology...

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Title
A Research on the Consistency and Difference of Urban Residents’ Evaluation of Occupational Prestige
Abstract
Occupational Prestige is the subjective evaluation that people give the society position of various occupations according to individual experience of life, and it is the important embodiment of people’s occupation values. Evaluation of Occupational Prestige can reflect the grade difference of occupation, and represent social central value.

Not the judgment of the "average" person, but the averaged judgments of many persons can show an extraordinary consistency across quite diverse groups of persons, and from one generation to the next, as well as remarkably high correlations with certain independent objective criteria. Such is the case with people's average subjective judgments of occupational "level" and their high correlation with the average tested IQs of persons in various occupations.